The Debate – Lawless Libya duurt 23 minuten.Gepubliceerd: 01-12-2014
The situation in Libya remains fragile and complicated: The past 6 weeks has seen about 400 people killed between Libyan pro-government forces and Islamist groups in Libya’s second-largest city Benghazi. One of the problems: The country essentially has 2 goverments: one in Tubruk, and one in Benghazi. In this edition of the debate, we’ll breakdown the elements vying or power, and further analyze how this has been a result of the US and NATO-led war 3 years ago.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the surviving son of Libya’s slain leader Muammar Gaddafi, has been sentenced to death in the country along with several other members of the former government. READ MORE: http://on.rt.com/6nwx

August 05, 2015 “Information Clearing House” – A video that shows Saadi Gaddafi, son of Libya’s late dictator Muammar, being tortured in jail has been condemned by lawyers and rights groups.

The nine-minute video shows Saadi, 42, in a green tracksuit, being hooked up to an improvised rack, apparently while in custody at Tripoli’s maximum security al-Hadba prison. His bare feet are then caned.

Segments show him sitting blindfolded and forced to listen to screams of other detainees being beaten in an adjacent room.

August 06, 2015 “Information Clearing House” – “WSWS” – A joint US-European mission to Libya involving soldiers from six countries is being hatched under the pretext of combating Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and with the aim of establishing a pliant pro-Western government and “stabilising” the country.

On August 1, the London Times reported, “Hundreds of British troops are being lined up to go to Libya as part of a major new international mission.” It stated that the UK soldiers would join “Military personnel from Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the United States…in an operation that looks set to be activated once the rival warring factions inside Libya agree to form a single government of national unity.”

It is part of an expansion of imperialist military interventions in the resource-rich Middle East and North Africa, coming on top of the war in Iraq and Syria, in which Britain and the other powers are pursuing their own geostrategic and commercial interests.

Paris – Libya’s foreign minister on Tuesday renewed a call for the lifting of an arms embargo and for international air strikes to help tackle the Islamic State group which threatens to create a “rear base” in the country.

“The situation is extremely serious,” Mohamed al-Dayri, foreign minister for Libya’s internationally-recognised government based in Misrata, told AFP on a visit to Paris.

“People are dying, are crucified, are disinterred from their graves, are burned alive. Libyans don’t understand why the international community doesn’t wake up to these dangers.”

CAIRO – Terror reigns in Sirte. Military fighter aircraft bombed ISIS positions Tuesday morning with an imprecise number of victims. At the same time, while about a hundred immigrants were being rescued from the Straight of Sicily, the jihadists killed four people and publicly displayed the crucified body of the one of the victims. The brutality put into place by the cutthroats loyal to the Caliph was documented in a video, released online this time as well.

Three Africans were slaughtered and their bodies dumped in a landfill. The fourth person was an exponent of the Fajr Libya, a militia that holds power in Tripoli. The man, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, was bound to a cross. Then the torture: the executioner unloaded a spray of bullets on his face, and his body was publicly displayed in order to warn residents. Guilty, according to the torturers, of being a spy. An episode that follows the beheading and crucifixion of 12 Libyan Salafis in mid-August. The Salafis were working to hunt down jihadists, and were killed by the Islamic fundamentalists. A savagery that frays when Sirte is heavily bombed by unidentified military fighter planes, and that according to witnesses caused numerous deaths and wounded, information that is currently unconfirmed by independent journalistic sources.

August 27, 2015 “Information Clearing House” – Another war is in the making in Libya: the questions are ‘how’ and ‘when’? While the prospect of another military showdown is unlikely to deliver Libya from its current security upheaval and political conflict, it is likely to change the very nature of conflict in that rich, but divided, Arab country.

An important pre-requisite to war is to locate an enemy or, if needed, invent one. The so-called ‘Islamic State’ (IS), although hardly an important component in the country’s divisive politics, is likely to be that antagonist.

Libya is currently split, politically, between two governments, and, geographically, among many armies, militias, tribes and mercenaries. It is a failed state par excellence, although such a designation does not do justice to the complexity of the Libyan case, together with the root causes of that failure.

Just as there was no al Qaeda or ISIS to attack in Iraq until the U.S. bombed its government, there was no ISIS in Libya until NATO bombed it. Now the U.S. is about to seize on the effects of its own bombing campaign in Libya to justify an entirely new bombing campaign in that same country. The New York Times editorial page, which supported the original bombing of Libya, yesterday labeled plans for the new bombing campaign “deeply troubling,” explaining: “A new military intervention in Libya would represent a significant progression of a war that could easily spread to other countries on the continent.” In particular, “this significant escalation is being planned without a meaningful debate in Congress about the merits and risks of a military campaign that is expected to include airstrikes and raids by elite American troops” (the original Libya bombing not only took place without Congressional approval, but was ordered by Obama after Congress rejected such authorization).